A former chemistry professor has been arrested by Chinese police on suspicion of selling a drug recipe to a gang which cooked up synthetic narcotics, state media reports.

The 50-year-old former academic surnamed Lu had “a set of recipes for producing methcathinone”, a drug similar to methamphetamine, which he provided to dealers.

Amphetamine labs are growing at an alarming rate, a Chinese police raid on the house of two methcathinone dealers in 2011 uncovered a pile of 80 million yuan, $AU13 million, in cash.

In Australia Amphetamine arrests have nearly double in past five years, according to Crime Commission’s Illicit Drug Data Report. Trade workers and those in the hospitality industry are among the biggest users of the drug according to an analysis of national drug data.

Lu “worked as a professor of chemistry at a university” in Xian, the capital of the northern province of Shaanxi, before teaming up with a drug manufacturer surnamed Chen in 2013 :: Read the full article »»»»

A popular but controversial documentary on China’s struggles with pollution was inaccessible on China’s video sharing websites on Saturday, sparking concern from Chinese Internet users it had been censored within a week of its launch.

Under the Dome, a film by journalist Chai Jing that explains air pollution in straightforward terms, spurred a national debate after its release last weekend and quickly garnered hundreds of millions of views on streaming video sites :: Read the full article »»»»

A Chinese court has sentenced one of China’s most prominent rights advocates to four years in prison after he campaigned for the rights of children from rural areas to be educated in cities and for officials to disclose their assets.

The Beijing Number 1 intermediate people’s court found Xu Zhiyong guilty of “gathering a crowd to disturb public order”, the court said on its official microblog. Xu was tried on Wednesday.

Xu’s jailing will send a stark warning to activists that the Chinese Communist Party will crush any challenge to its rule, especially from those who seek to organise campaigns.

It also diminishes hopes for meaningful political change, even as China pledges to embark on economic reforms :: Read the full article »»»»

A prominent scholar has been arrested in China just weeks after criticising the government in an interview with Australia’s ABC, Ilham Tohti’s family say around 30 police came to his home to take away the Beijing based ethnic Muslin Uighur, he is now being held in an unknown location.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, says Mr Tohti is “suspected of breaking the law” computers have been removed from his home, but no further details would been given.

Mr Tohti’s supporters fear his detention is part of a wider crackdown on dissent coming out of the far-Western Xinjiang province following an apparent car fire suicide attack at Tiananmen Gate.

Ilham Tohti is well known for his research on Uyghur-Han relations and is a vocal advocate for the implementation of regional autonomy laws in China, Mr Tohti, a prominent blogger, was the host of Uyghur Online, a website that discusses Uyghur issues. Tohti was previously detained shortly after the 2009 Ürümqi riots by the authorities :: Read the full article »»»»

More than 500 lawmakers in a Chinese city have resigned after being implicated in a bribery scandal, while another 56 provincial legislators have been sacked as the government steps up its war on graft.

The official Xinhua news agency said the 512 lawmakers in Hengyang city in the poor, landlocked southern province of Hunan resigned after they took bribes from 56 members of the provincial assembly.

The total amount of the bribes was more than 110 million yuan ($20 million) and the money was used to swing the results of elections, Xinhua said, citing a Hunan government statement.

China does not have fully democratic one-man, one-vote elections but has experimented with a selection process at the grassroots for local legislatures, even if most candidates are Communist Party members and there is rarely more than a single candidate for each position available :: Read the full article »»»»

Communist China’s president Xi Jinping has acknowledged that the country’s founding father, Mao Zedong, made “mistakes”, as Mao admirers celebrated the 120th anniversary of the late leader’s birth with noodles and fireworks.

Mao is the centrepiece of the ruling party’s pantheon and commands reverence among many Chinese, including some frustrated by the current state of the nation, but is also condemned by those who say his political and economic campaigns caused tens of millions of deaths.

China has never before allowed such an open historical discussion of his actions. Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” is estimated by Western historians to have led to as many as 45 million deaths from famine, and his Cultural Revolution plunged China into a decade of violent chaos.

China traditionally measured time in 60-year cycles. Mao, who in 1949, is remembered by many as a tyrant and leader of disastrous political campaigns that killed tens of millions, for others, the China created by Mao should be celebrated :: Read the full article »»»»